


Boomerang My Head

by andwhatyousaid



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Anxiety, Bathrooms, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Hiatus (Fall Out Boy), Take This To Your Apartment, general mental health issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-18 23:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22668496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andwhatyousaid/pseuds/andwhatyousaid
Summary: While filming Take This To Your Apartment for their album's 10th anniversary, Pete tries to stay grounded.
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Comments: 11
Kudos: 48





	Boomerang My Head

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired entirely by this [special moment](https://andwhatyousaid.tumblr.com/post/189433868227/trohmann-take-this-to-your-apartment-requested) that Pete and Patrick share in the bathroom while filming Take This To Your Apartment (parts [one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnlmYn_xOLc) and [two](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqgGhgAEGtA), here for reference). Perhaps also inspired by every single expression Pete makes throughout the videos. Anyway, here is the extrapolated fic version of that content. Warnings for description of anxiety and other mental health struggles, including indirect reference to Pete's past attempt. Title sourced from Lake Effect Kid. Standard disclaimer applies: 1000000% not real.
> 
> One-thousand little grateful, shiny bowing emojis in thanks to [carbonbased000](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carbonbased000/pseuds/carbonbased000) for making this safe for public consumption, and generally being oh, idk, the best ever. Thanks to you, too, for reading; I appreciate it.

Pete knows it’s coming, and the night before, he doesn’t sleep for shit. He waits as long as he can —puttering from the couch, to the kitchen, opening up the fridge door and checking inside though nothing new has appeared since he last checked, the chilling air pooling around him, and then back again, circling through Patrick’s living room like it’s a track at a field, glancing at the cool, blue digital numbers on the clock under the TV and marking their slow climb. He doesn’t want to wait too long —not so late that he’ll intentionally feel sick from the lack of sleep tomorrow, that he’ll get that muggy, slippery nausea, and not so early that he’ll wake up some time in the night, unable to go back to sleep, and only manage it again right before the alarm blares.

Patrick’s no help —working away in his home studio, the big, plush headphones over his ears; the door is ajar, but his back is to Pete, nothing but his shoulders hunching over his computer at his desk, obscured by the back of the rolling, mesh chair. Pete watches him, and, for a moment, thinks _maybe_ , and tries it: creeps through the doorway, and leans over Patrick, one hand curled over the back of Patrick’s chair, the other planted on the end of the desk, peering into the computer screen and watching Patrick guide the mouse from one green wavy soundbar to another, futzing with the levels, until Patrick acknowledges him —which he does sort of blindly, lifting his hand from the keyboard to pat the side of Pete’s face. 

“What’s that?” Pete asks, his voice rough from disuse. 

“Hmm?” Patrick says, as if coming into focus; he slides one side of the headphones back, revealing his ear, seemingly to better hear Pete. “Which one?”

Pete points to one of the soundbars that makes the biggest leap: raising real high before falling real low, dramatic. “That,” he says, unable to imagine which instrument would need to do such a thing.

“Just —working on something,” says Patrick, and then he glances at Pete’s face and appears a little —guilty, almost, his eyes darting from Pete to the glowing screen. 

So Pete feels a grin come on, though it’s too cutting, stretching his mouth, and says, “Do your thing.” He twists to kiss Patrick’s cheek, the bone there sharp, and then relieves him.

He’d thought it would help to have Patrick next to him, but even after Patrick comes to bed, he knocks right out; it was late when he'd first crawled in, closer to early dawn than night, and Pete had already been lying there for hours with no luck. He had forced himself as still as a corpse in Patrick’s bedsheets, his heart hammering thinking that Patrick would know he hadn’t been able to sleep for hours, that he'd get caught, but Patrick had fallen in, wrapped his arm around Pete’s waist and chest, spooning into the side of him, as if Pete was a warm body, alive, none the wiser. 

Maybe he’d assumed Pete was asleep already —or maybe he’d felt the weight of having to get up in a few, sparse hours himself. Either way, Pete had lied there, hearing the ticking of the clock, the traffic rolling by outside; Patrick's arm was like an anchor across him, weighted like a magnetic blanket, holding him down, and Pete’d felt himself lying still without sinking into the sheets, knowing that without Patrick’s arm anchoring him, he’d be up, pacing again through the living room again. So, he’d stared at the ceiling, imagining torrents of words appearing on it, crisp black letters one after the other, the inside of his mind spooling out, and then thought about the apartment he’d lived in with Joe and Patrick, and when that made his breath tight, he’d tried to think about anything else instead —anything, tried to feel Patrick now, focus on it: the soft weight of him, his breaths, counting them and counting his own.

He must’ve fallen asleep some time because the bright morning light hits him like a ton of bricks, and he wakes up swearing, turning away from it and into the pillows, cursing at it and the thin curtains over the windows, entirely unlike the blackout shades he has in L.A. It doesn’t bother Patrick —the natural light streaming in, and Pete doesn’t know how he can stand it. 

They have other morning press —a few quick things, in and out of the cameras —before they go see the apartment. The day gets hot, cracking wide open for the sun, and the heat gets worse inside the van on the ride over with the windows sealed shut and everyone crowding inside. 

Everyone —his band and a couple photographers from AP and the gear for the shoot —they all ride together in the cramped space. Pete spends the ride in the very last row of seats, left vacant, with his head between his knees, counting deep, even breaths, staring down at the blank, taupe carpet floor of the van, eyes wide open, but without really seeing it. He's imagining a deep, vast ocean instead —wading in up to his neck, his chin just above the water, it lapping at his bottom lip so that he can smell the salt and seaweed, nearly taste it, and if he opened his mouth at all, if he did, it'd flood in immediately, and he’d drown like that, neck-deep. He tries to picture the water receding —the tide reassuringly pulling back into the ocean, but instead, the wave builds into one giant wall, a threatening tsunami, and he feels the phantom drowning again; the anticipation of waiting for the impact will kill him alone, so he holds his breath to see if that will hurry up and suffocate him, but it doesn't; his breath just rushes out, normal as anything, his lungs working on automatic, his body knowing how to keep him alive.

For his effort, he gets a hand on his leg, right at his knee between where Pete's own elbows fall —Patrick, then. 

Patrick says, quietly, like no one can hear them from the back seat of the van, “It’s just me,” and Pete tries not to scoff, wanting to roll his eyes so hard he imagines them falling right out of his skull. 

He almost snaps _That’s the problem, that it isn’t just you_. But then Patrick goes on to say, “It’s not too late —if this is too much,” still quietly. He must be angled toward Pete, his head bent down in a mock-privacy curtain, so that he can speak closer to Pete’s ear, block out the rest of the van. His thumb is rubbing a little, back and forth, over Pete’s jeans at the knee. “We can just —like, fuck it, we’ll come up with some excuse and you won’t have to go.”

“Thanks,” Pete says, almost wanting to laugh, though it’d come out sour. “But I’m pretty sure I do have to go.” He presses both of his hands over his face and says into the darkness from behind his palms, muffled, “It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.”

“But if you’re not —” Patrick’s saying, even more quietly, as if that is possible, a near whisper, like how he talks to Pete on the phone sometimes when it’s close to 3 AM, and Pete’s whole bedroom is silent and still, but the house seems alive, the walls seeming to breathe slowly, evenly, in the way that Pete’s unable to get his body to do, and Pete's transported into another space where Patrick’s voice is the only sound. “If you’re not, that’s more important.”

Pete finally lets his face go, and turns his head into the side of his arm, his cheek settling against the underside of his skin there. He watches Patrick’s thumb stroke back and forth over his jeans, too quick, like wearing a hole through the carpet from pacing, like Pete was doing last night. He shifts his hand to cover Patrick’s, still it. “I’ll be fine,” Pete says again. He glances up to meet Patrick’s eyes.

Patrick’s waiting for him, already looking back. The van rolls to a stop, jerking at the landing, and Patrick turns his hand so that it’s right side-up, their palms touching, and squeezes. 

Before Pete can squeeze back, Patrick pulls his hand away, and starts to bend over the rows of seats to ask if they’re here, what he can help carry.

The whole walk to the apartment —and the cameras _do_ need a shot of them walking down the block first and arriving upon the door, the magazine insists on it, and Pete gets it, he does, but —he wants to shove his sweatshirt on so bad, though it’s too hot. The heat does nothing to quell the dread pooling in the pit of his stomach the entire slow climb up the narrow, angled staircase, though he remembers the creek, the rickety steps with a sharp, sudden sense of _déjà vu_. 

While they wait outside the door to the apartment, he leans against the wood alcove between the jamb and the wall, and tries not to fidget; the weight of his backpack on his shoulders, his sweatshirt lying heavy over his clasped hands helps, though he can’t keep his eyes from darting around the corridor, to Patrick in front of him, and Joe right behind him, and Andy on the other side, his eyes sliding away again, down to the floor, then up to the ceiling.

The camera is right behind him, he knows it. And when the door opens, there will be another one, and it will see this, spread all over his face. He can’t reach for Patrick, either —can’t tug him over by the sleeve of his denim jacket, can’t ask for a time-out now, can’t go outside and imagine chaining an entire pack of cigarettes just to pretend to be someone else for a minute. 

The door opens and Pete tries not to clench his jaw. These girls, they’re just normal people. They have no idea. And Pete tries to imagine that —not having any idea —as he crosses the threshold, touching the door like it’s new, looking at the clean and cramped kitchen counter, the magnets on the fridge like he’s never been here before. But his hand starts shaking a little from the effort, so he clasps them together again beneath his sweatshirt, gripping the material on the underside, wanting to squeeze it tight, so tight that the seams tear apart, while his eyes dart from the pristine, stainless steel sink basin to the old wooden cabinets to the retro linoleum floor. 

And when they’re invited fully into the space, his heart won’t quit thumping, annoying and persistent, his mouth splintering around an odd, slanted smile at the girls, the cameras from it. But he can’t press his hand to his chest to still it, it isn’t like Patrick’s hand on his knee was; it makes his breath want to speed up too, want to kickstart into high-gear. He drifts to get out of the corner of the room, to move somewhere, and Patrick’s heading to the bathroom so Pete follows, putting his back to the camera. He watches Patrick flick the lights on, stare at the inside of the shower. Patrick looks like he wants to laugh —Pete wishes he could touch that expression with both hands and absorb into his body, but he can’t. He can’t. Not here. 

If this were another time, he imagines he'd crowd Patrick into the space, close the door behind him so it's just the two of them, and that other world would be created again, like when it's just Patrick's voice on the phone, just the sound of that. And Patrick would be able to look honestly at him, and Pete would be able to look back honestly, to grab him, haul him in, feel the weight of Patrick against his chest and hands, breathe him in, tuck his face into the crook of Patrick's neck and be held for a moment, tell him, "I don't want to go back out there," like they were at some industry party and trying to make excuses to leave early, and Patrick would let him say it, would maybe laugh a little, but not mean, not sardonic, not judging, just like _yeah, me either, come on, let's get it over with big guy_ , and even though the door would have to open sometime, it wouldn't have to open so soon; they would be able to shut it, for that moment. 

He stalls there, waiting for Patrick to look at him so that he can see what’s written all over Pete’s face, but he only gets Patrick’s eyes for a flickering second —there and then gone, and Patrick’s smiling, as if reminiscing fondly. 

Pete doesn't know if it's for him or the cameras, and he can’t ask _Do you mean that?_ But he feels his mouth wobbling around the effort of keeping it in, threatening to crack open. 

He takes a step back, away from it, but instead of backing out of the doorway and drifting along the hallway to the next room like he’d planned, he steps into the tiny space, twists suddenly on his heel and shuts the door quickly, looking down and letting the brim of his _Bulls_ hat hide him from the camera, for once.

“What,” Patrick says immediately, once the door is closed, “Pete—”

Pete crowds into Patrick like he’d imagined, getting his face right into the crux of Patrick’s neck and shoulder, gripping him at his hips by his belt-loops, pulling him in, hunching into him, awkward with the bulk of his backpack, trying not to crush the shades Patrick has hanging in his collar. “I just need —just a minute,” Pete says into Patrick’s shoulder.

“Of course,” Patrick says, differently, softly, but just as immediately. His arms come up, one slipping across his lower back beneath the weight of his backpack, his other hand curling around Pete’s bicep. 

Pete chokes on his words —he doesn’t manage to say that he doesn’t want to be there or can’t go back out; he doesn’t manage to say anything, and Patrick doesn’t ask why, lets him breathe in slowly, counting to ten, and out just as slowly, hearing Patrick’s heart pump steadily, consistently, unbothered by Pete’s head spinning around him, unbothered by the ghost of Pete’s 23 year-old self sitting at the bathroom counter, lying in the tub; the husk of the person he left behind sloughing off of him onto the floor, making him afraid to look down at the corpse.

“Eventually, we’ll have to open the door,” Patrick says, quietly. 

“I know,” says Pete. He squeezes his eyes shut and pushes his face further into Patrick’s neck, bracing, before pulling back and staring into Patrick’s glasses-less face, as intimate as it was in his bed early this morning, framing it with both of his hands. 

Patrick’s looking at him as calmly and steadily as he had in the van —not grim or determined, just patient, waiting, something the unrecognizable version of himself haunting the doorway never would have seen. 

Pete surges forward to kiss him hard on the mouth, as if trying to bury himself inside. 

“Hey,” Patrick says against Pete’s mouth, murmuring, his thumb stroking down the side of Pete’s face. “I’m right here.” He gentles the next kiss, slowing, so that Pete can feel his mouth, warm and damp, his bottom lip sliding against Pete’s own, but not pressing in. 

It makes Pete clutch at the back of Patrick’s jacket, tight, wishing that he would. But Pete’s —trying, really trying this time around, so he doesn’t push, and, instead, steps back and presses his cheek against Patrick. “Sorry,” he says, his voice coming out hoarse and gravelly. 

There’s a short knock, a quick rap, and Pete forces himself back, but Patrick glances at him, and then shouts, loud enough to be heard through the door, “Yeah, give us a minute.” He grasps Pete by the shoulders, holding him for a single, stinging moment. 

“Okay?” Patrick whispers, for Pete’s ears only.

“Okay,” Pete confirms, and forces himself to let go, to reverse his steps: there’s hardly enough room to turn around, but he manages to, and then opens the door, holding his breath so that he doesn’t gasp at the sudden chill, as if a ghost has passed through him or he’s passed through it, forcing himself to breathe out and look back up into the camera, digging up a smile from the bottom of his guts, however odd and wobbly it is across his mouth. He doesn’t look back at Patrick —just belatedly moves through the hallway and onto the next room, the open space, as he hears Patrick share some story to the camera and the girls about the sink and hair products.

+

“There’re so many great things,” Patrick’s saying from directly behind Pete, “about this closet and the dude living in this closet.” 

His tone alone —pitched with excitement —is enough to make Pete smile at the inside of the narrow closet he’s peeking into, but he’d be lying if he said he could concentrate on anything except for Patrick pressed near to his back, close enough to feel the edge of his denim jacket but not close enough to touch, and Pete grips the side of the entryway to cut through, to feel something. “Um,” he says, needing to pull away, escaping past Patrick to the balcony doors adjacent to them. 

“You wanna go with any of them?” Patrick asks. “I remember _a lot_.”

Pete tries not to look at anyone directly. “Oh, man,” he says, “Yeah —you go,” because if he doesn’t go to stare out the glass sliding doors and out onto the street to remind himself the whole world isn’t contained here, in this room, in his mind, then he doesn’t know what he’s going to do, but it won’t be for the cameras.

Once Patrick’s in it, regaling stories with Joe left and right, the weight starts to shift in Pete’s chest, and he watches Patrick closely, wanting to relive it the way that Patrick sees it, disappear into it, and finds other memories start to shake loose, drift up to the surface. 

And then, after standing in as many different positions as he can —his arms over his head, absently checking his phone before remembering he shouldn’t, abortively taking his hat off before readjusting and putting it right back on— answering what he can, there’s only coffee and snacks that Pete can’t stomach and the prep for the shoot itself, tolerating the paper-thin coat of make-up brushed onto him, ignoring the heat and dampness on his back, under his arms, in the room, his eyes no longer skittering over the apartment in acute detail, but unseeing instead, tired and absent.

At least Patrick spends far too long studying his former self’s original pose for the cover, which Pete can’t figure out whether he wants to laugh at or kiss him for more, so he stares instead, but it’s a distraction either way. 

Between the insistent shutter-clicking for the magazine cover, Pete figures the vacant, pouting, dissociated look will be fine. Probably look closer to the original than he could’ve planned. 

It isn’t so hard when they’re outside for the final shot with the girls. The air is free and open, and though the long-sleeved, button-up shirt is tighter in a way that might’ve been suffocating on another day, he only wants to add more layers today, grateful for the way it holds him in, missing his hat something fierce, and then at last —finally, _finally_ , they’re fucking done, and Pete hardly manages to shake everyone’s hand in thanks before he disappears behind the side of the building to take deep breaths into his hands, semi-hoping to suffocate himself through it, and pace in a circle. 

There’s a patch of undisturbed cement, half in the shade from the building and half in the sun, which beats down on his shoulders, tenacious; the balconies of other units float overhead along with birds cawing in the distance.

He’s glad he doesn’t have his backpack now —that was smart, to leave it in the van before the final shoot —because all he can think about is the emergency orange bottle he has stashed in the bottom of it, the tumble of little blue pills that would pour out into his palm; he thinks about touching them now, just to make sure they’re there, they’re real, remember how they feel, chalky and coarse, imagines crushing them with the flat of his palm, grinding them into a dust, and then —

“There you are,” comes Patrick’s voice from behind him, and Pete lowers his hands to peek at Patrick over his fingers, twisting around to find him —looking as fresh as he had this morning, his skin glowing in the sunlight, his jacket slung over his shoulder, his rolled sleeves still perfectly held up. 

“Here I am,” Pete echos hollowly. 

“Come on,” says Patrick, stepping closer, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. His shades are on so Pete can’t see into his eyes. “You ready to get home?”

“Not exactly,” says Pete, running his hands over his hair and pulling it in a way that will surely screw it up worse before dropping them entirely.

Patrick’s mouth twists at that, and Pete really wishes he could tear those shades off and throw them to the ground just to see the expression caught in Patrick’s eyes. 

“I’ll be fine,” says Pete, immediately, almost wincing at it. “Just —weird day.” 

“Yeah,” says Patrick, agreeing, nodding, like he understands, though he can’t possibly, Pete thinks. He can’t possibly know.

“Thank you, for today,” Pete says, to try to communicate it. “It’s just —” he shakes his head. He wants to look away, up to the sky again, where it’s wide open and clear, not a cloud to be found, but he’s trying, so he wills himself to stay still.

“Just what?” Patrick asks, coming nearer and stepping into a patch of shade —close enough now to touch Pete’s elbow, which he reaches out and does, his hand half in the dark and half in the light, though his grip isn’t pulling or demanding —only solid, affirming. 

Pete stares into Patrick’s face. “I just got you back,” he says, harsher than he means to, choking on it. “Do you get that? I _just_ fucking got you.” 

“Pete,” Patrick says, startled, almost sour, faltering his grip.

"I don’t want to go back to that,” Pete says, before he loses his nerve, squeezing his eyes shut as if he can will it away. 

“I never went anywhere,” Patrick says, and though Pete knows that isn’t true, he wants to believe it when Patrick says it. He feels Patrick’s hands on his face, his thumb running along his cheekbone, coaxing, encouraging. “Come on,” he says again, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Yeah,” says Pete, opening his eyes. Patrick’s pushed his shades up into his hair, and Pete can see now —Patrick's eyes are crisp, deep blue, like the waves inside Pete’s mind, attentive and sharp on Pete’s face, not looking anywhere else. “Okay,” he says, steeling himself. “I’m not that guy anymore, Patrick,” he says. He doesn’t say _He’s dead_.

“I know,” says Patrick. “You don’t have to convince me.” He touches the center of Pete’s chest, right over the shiny buttons of his shirt, his long fingers stretching to touch the embroidered design at the collar, the open part at the top and the fabric of his simple, plain t-shirt beneath.

Pete puts his hand over Patrick’s on his chest and squeezes, holding it, and then lets go, forcing his breath out, stepping out of the hot sun and following Patrick into the shade, around the corner of the building and back to the van waiting on the curb to take them home. 


End file.
